But your face and your eyes still looked worried and showed signs of inner wrath. Your perfectionism revealed itself in your behaviour. Something in your universe had turned fickle and gone wrong and sowed confusion in the rest of it. I myself was embarrassed. It was my fault. I didn’t know what to do in this case. I could only reimburse you a little at a time until you told me it was enough. I’d do it as long as necessary. I was certain you wouldn’t take advantage of me. I didn’t dare to look you in the eye. How much had I given back to you all told? Eight thousand? Nine thousand maybe, but surely not ten thousand. From that day onwards, we practically never saw each other again. It looked as though you were avoiding me. I vaguely heard you’d changed your lifestyle radically and changed your appearance radically and you’d sold yourself to the Japanese advertising agency and were a copywriter promised to a brilliant future. You’d accepted to work in the agency where your friend the former leftist was artistic director. You’d written advertising slogans for a car, a shopping centre, a computer. I told myself those were but groundless rumours, as I knew you were too free a man to put up with any system whatsoever, but when I found out it was true, I was flabbergasted. My experience of the world fell short. I could never have imagined you’d dare to change that much. I met you one more time some six months later at Wanakharm, the joint where the Old Lion had brought us to get drunk. It was a chance encounter. We smiled at each other with a little too automatic a smile. You wore the neat garb of the young office worker, hair cut shorter, combed backwards, exposing your large forehead of august sage. You had entirely shaved your beard and moustache. There was a gorgeous girl glomming on to you, the kind of creeper unable to stand without a stake. It was the first time I saw you wear your shirt tucked inside your trousers. We merely exchanged five or six sentences and you excused yourself to go back to your sweet-eyed lovey, who had sat down at another table. Her black-skirt slit up one side gaped to mid-thigh. She was dressed all in black and it was to be hoped it wasn’t in mourning over her recently deceased husband. She smoked and drank beer, to top it all, with something oddly affected in her way of smoking and drinking. She was no doubt a daring, funloving modern woman. But I wasn’t at all jealous. That day you did something damn odd: you held out your calling card. So it’s true what those friends of the circle under the pines are saying, I told myself while my eyes rove over your card. And on top of that, that advertising agency is Japanese! In that case, it meant you were already far gone, yet another seagull cruising the open sea far from solid ground. The newly opened shopping centre whose jingle you had thought up was a Japanese shopping centre. The wretched car whose slogan you had written, asserting it was a model of safety, was a Japanese car. The computer whose performance you vaunted, saying it allowed one man to do the work of three, was a Japanese computer, and its value outstanding, in a year when hundreds of thousands of young men and women had no jobs. The people of this country had all become slaves to the Japanese. And you had joined in with them. You had allowed yourself to be bought by those zombies. The day I met you at Wanakharm, your face was so neat I felt like spitting on it. You had destroyed the hero in you with your own hands. And only to think you had tried to shape me up, over there in Bua Yai, comrade! For fuck’s sake! Excuse me, but spending your life in the streets drawing portraits to order, that’s what was magnificent! That’s what was sacrosanct! You should never have given it up. That’s what’s so hard to find in this dim and indigent century where all mysteries have been demystified, summits conquered, the navel of the sea fathomed, the mass and weight of the earth figured out, the farthermost islands and territories discovered and colonised. There aren’t many things people like you and I can do, and one of them was what you used to do. Who the heck dared to do what you did? But that was over. I knew you were sorrier about it than I. So then, what is it like, life as an office worker? Tell me, puppet, what is it like, to have a Jap boss? Clocking in and clocking out, does that bug you or not? What do you think of the saying ‘The customer is king’? What’s your reaction to your agency’s motto, ‘We sell or we go bust’? Do you speak of marketing strategy, customers targeting, consumer behavioural patterns, fostering customer loyalty and so forth with the same measured, unruffled, sincere voice with which you spoke not so long ago of common front, third world solidarity, exposing the hideous heart of capitalism, revisionist doctrines, releasing slaves that refuse to untie their chains, overthrowing decadent society, elaborating a new society and other such shibboleths? I got up from the table, took your calling card between the tips of my thumb and forefinger and went to stand in front of your table. You’ve changed a lot, haven’t you ? I said as I sat down uninvited. You didn’t seem particularly enchanted with the visit, and neither did your doe-eyed lovey. It seemed you and she had rather be alone. What got over you to do such a thing? I asked frankly, almost forgetting that wasn’t the proper behaviour of a debtor to his creditor. You answered me as frankly, in the even tone that is yours, I felt like being rich quick, quite simply. I said slowly, stressing each word deliberately, To dream of a better life isn’t wrong; wealth in itself isn’t bad. Then I quoted as a bonus the only Portuguese saying I’ve ever remembered in my life by adding in a normal voice and with an impassive face, If one day shit becomes valuable, the poor won’t have the right to own their own arses. Your doe-eyed lovey started, planted her fork in her salad bowl belligerently and said Excuse me, then she made for the toilet, even though she didn’t really need to relieve herself. The little red wart at the tip of her chin has stuck in my memory. The shape of her face was reminiscent of that of a former cinema actress, Arrada Sirin. This may be why I remember her as if she were in front of me. You were trying to ignore my provocative manners. You asked me if the Old Lion had sent news from America. And how is Marnit Seewa? How is Khampan Seenuea? How is Jitti Phuaphisoot? Is Thanit Sukkaseim still doing his utmost to lay his hand on a stamp with the effigy of John Steinbeck? Oh, and how about Superman, our artist dog? Has he started a home and family yet? You asked me how far I’d gone into my studies. You asked me if what I wrote had already been published somewhere or not yet. When one meets in the big city, when one chats in the big city, time is precious, time is in short supply, time is precious and must be used with intelligence by submitting it to the neuronal adding machine of the born calculator that one is. With a discreet flick of the wrist, you looked at your watch, then looked towards the loo where your latest conquest to date had absconded. That was a way of telling me in body language you didn’t want to chat with me. The preceding conversation was just a matter of good manners. A little later, you left the shop with her, in her black car. It’s strange, thinking back about you and me. Where did we come from? Have you been back home at all? Each of us has his own suffering and must take care of his own suffering. So many people in Bangkok. An average of three thousand inhabitants per square kilometre – and that’s an old statistic, it must be more by now. Cheap friendships… Cheap loves… We met, became close, almost to the point we could be called friends. You did come to my help in my hour of need. And then we became estranged because of the panther in my dream one night and because of a certain amount of money between us. I hope your face will fade away like the faces of strangers I meet in buses, cinemas, shopping centres or bars, but for the time being it’s still here and it torments me. Gone are the sea, the mountains and the rivers, gone the nights of cold moonlight and flower scents drifting from the jungle. Only cast-off skins are left of the young men who used to enjoy the real meaning of life by talking to each other, comparing each other’s experience, exchanging books, playing music and singing together. What remain in the big city are throngs of male and female youngsters with eyes hungry for sex, money and work, prestige and lust – preys and predators all. The world has changed through the power of economic dictators. The warlords of finance and the foot soldiers are roaming around in search of a place to conquer. Thai society trying to adjust to modern times… Thai society trying to adjust to the West�
� How wretchedly lonesome it is to look at the future! Hope, if there is any, rests with the five-year-olds. (The sentence is George Orwell’s, in 1984, but Orwell has nothing to do here.) You and I are part of these changes. We both have gone on daydreaming on our separate ways. You sold yourself to the Japanese because you had no choice. Some three years later, I sold myself to the Americans because I had no choice either. Money is important, very important when we have little and vital when we have none. Money is the necessity of life, and it was money that turned us into strangers. I kept getting news of you from time to time. The friends of the circle under the pines told me you worked flat out, though actually you hated doing advertising work but forced yourself to bear with it, as you were determined to acquire that plot of land by the Phetchaburi. The news I received made me realise you were angry with me. You said I hadn’t reimbursed my debt entirely and had apparently no intention of doing so. You said the panther in my dream was but a pathetic cheap trick. I couldn’t believe you spoke that way, but those whispered calumnies kept recurring. The Old Lion wrote to me personally to ask bluntly if it was true I owed you money and intended to default, and he even added that, if I truly owed you money, I should hasten to pay off that debt in order not to compromise the friendship between you and me. That letter was the proof the rumours had reached even the Old Lion, and it was obvious even he was siding with you. At the beginning of the following month, I went, money in hand, to see you at Seewiang once again. The old landlady of the hostel told me sadly you’d moved to live in the Ratchathevi area, but you’d left her neither phone number nor address. I too was completely in the dark. I didn’t know where to forward the money to you. But it was your fault, damn it! You didn’t want my money and you had the cheek to tell everywhere I intended to default. Damn you, that wasn’t fair to me. Especially as you were a champion of justice, right? You must’ve been on edge. You must’ve been seriously put off. You never set foot in the U again. You kept roving around Bangkok for a long time. Now and then news of you reached me from various sources. You changed jobs as you would shirts, from one agency to the next. You went to Tibet to shoot the ads for a brand of shampoo. You enlisted in the basic Korean language course at Chulalongkorn. You bought a City Car from Japan to show off in town. You played a key role in the creation of the association of artistic directors and you were the main force behind the award ceremony bestowing gold cutters to the most creative artistic directors. You kept changing sex partners. You finally bought the plot of land by the Phetchaburi as you wanted and built a hut on it, but you left both as they were and only went there to rest once in a long while. On that land you planted two hundred rose apple trees of the local variety, two hundred santol, two hundred pomegranate and much bamboo. You had to hire someone to take care of the hut, the fruit trees and your two Bangkaew dogs. We met by chance several times but didn’t talk to each other. And it was only four years later that we really came face to face. During the most ignoble night of my life. You, me and Itthee Phoowadon. It shouldn’t have been possible. It should never have happened. But it well and truly happened. That night, I should’ve killed you. Your life was destroyed by the yoni. My life was destroyed by the yoni. But let’s not talk about this. At least not now. Or maybe we’ll never talk about it again. Maybe I’ll take this memory to the grave along with my putrid life. Let’s say that if I meet you again, I’ll kill you, that’s all. And right now, given that you are someone who loves justice, I’ll merely tell you that, if you really love justice, one day the truth will out, but if you are merely a son of a bitch in love with justice, one day the truth will out similarly. We’ll meet for sure. And not in the universe of silence, furthermore. We’ll threaten each other and pounce on each other once again. And I’ll kill you. But right now, I’ve had it. I’m soaked through and tumble on the arid field of life, caught in the storm of memory and shivering with cold. Let me sit down and rest for a while, make myself a coffee and smoke a cigarette. And all my apologies, bloody hell, if it isn’t funny.
the peacock spreads its tail in the rain
Do you not know, Prometheus, that words are healers of the sick temper?
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
A faint shadow. A faint shadow under torture. A shadow that hardly moves or, if it does move, moves wearily, spent, drinks coffee, smokes or gets up to go for a pee. A shadow that sometimes folds up on itself as if under extreme terror, as if under extreme cold. A shadow that sometimes lets itself utter yells, groans or speaks aloud. A faint shadow. A faint shadow that grows increasingly faint. A faint shadow whose ultimate fate is to disappear, trace of a mind torn up, thrown away, completely destroyed. Can you see it? I lost you for all eternity. What am I doing here? Thinking about you, is that it? What’s the use? I’d like to go somewhere. Where then? I tell myself I’d like to go out, walk or slither or crawl. I’d like to bay at the moon, not like a dog bays at the moon or like a sphinx bays at the moon but like a shark bays at the moon. I’d like to swim forth and bay at the moon, for my voice to float over a black sea of which only the horizon line can be seen. It is an overflowing urge to want to swim forth, to want to bay at the moon. I want the sea. It is an excessive urge. The sea. To swim without stopping, to swim without end, until you sink and go deep into the increasingly cold cold, into the increasingly dark darkness, into the increasingly mysterious mystery. The sea. Nothing but the sea. No need for it to have a white-sailed boat. It’s been a long time since I stopped dreaming about a white-sailed boat or a reef or a sandy beach or the sky or a flight of birds. Nothing else but the sea. The sea without end. The sea and the horizon. Right now, I need the sea and I’d like to swim in that sea, yell or bay at the moon like a shark. Cold. Here, it is cold. Here the moonlight grows increasingly bright. Dew falls increasingly hard in droplets as small as jasmine petals, in droplets as small as dew diamonds, in droplets as small as a child-goddess’s tears. Tears of dew freeze on my scarred face. No, I’m not crying. There are no tears on my face. There have never been and never will be. There are no flowers or tears of dew that freeze on flower petals anywhere. There have never been and never will be. Nine hundred thousand years ago I was born a mammoth… What would it be like if I’d been born a mammoth? A gigantic body covered with thick, long, raggedy hair, a pair of tusks whiter than Miss Universe’s legs. What would I eat? How would I live? And how would I die? I like to think of the death of a mammoth, dazzling white on a white field of ice which knows but wind and snow, think of its squirms in torment, think of its trunk reared up and of its trumpeting. Its calls, who would hear them? How many sorts of living beings were there in the world then? There was no word yet to designate man. Man himself had yet to be born or, if he was around, was but a kind of monkey. Jungle, jungle, jungle. There was nothing but jungle and streams, marshes, canals and swamps, and strange ferns. Sleeping pills… Itthee died because of sleeping pills. Whoever thinks of committing suicide usually chooses sleeping pills first. Sleeping pills and beer – what can that taste like? Insecticide and beer – what can that taste like? Body paralysed, mouth full of blood, mouth full of saliva. Kutsala thamma, akutsala thamma, appayakata thamma62. I didn’t go to Itthee Phoowadon’s funeral. You did. And one month and twenty-six, twenty-seven days after Itthee’s death, I went to see you in your riverside house. It was a holiday and I knew that on every holiday you went back home. Since the death of Itthee, I’d been so drunk I couldn’t stand straight. When an employee of the confectionary came to tell you I wanted to see you, you were no doubt dismayed and irritated. When I went to see you I was sloshed worse than ever. It was pitch black by then. You and I went to sit in the pavilion by the river as we used to in the old days. Almost nothing had changed, except that you and I were older. The evening star shone feebly above bamboo clumps on the opposite bank and I told you straight and to the point, as if talking business, I want to marry you. You know that I love you. Like a business proposition and as if I was addressing my shadow and as if I was talking to a brick wall. You didn’t mo
ve, said nothing. You were looking at the evening star. Maybe because of my behaviour as a madman, which I couldn’t hide, maybe because of the lingering odour of alcohol of my body, of my breath, or maybe because I’d made you suffer or because of a thousand and one ignominious reasons from hell – maybe it was all of that that made you shake your head. You said nothing at all. You merely shook your head as if to send flying all the abominable memories concerning me. Your refusal shattered me to pieces, darling. Everything was destroyed, everything was reduced to dust. I only live from day to day and keep on wandering blindly and sinking more and more. I’m a foul beast that once in a while raises its head to look at the horizon. Alas, here I am having slept with Khwan. I shouldn’t have sinned with your friend. I’m wondering whether I didn’t sleep with Khwan to avenge myself of you and punish you for rejecting me. Isn’t that so, Kangsadarn? I miss you. But maybe we’ll never meet again. I don’t know. At the very least, that’s what I want right now. You are a dream woman lost forever, even if I was fed up with you once and looked for the opportunity to run away from you and when I succeeded (with Itthee’s complicity) I practically no longer dared to meet you, except when it was indispensable, for example when I was short of money and didn’t know where to find any. But every time we met you smiled at me and greeted me as an old friend. As a friend. That’s right: only as a friend. You no longer wished for more than that. Actually, I didn’t dare to even imagine what you thought of me until we met that time. Your refusal was an affront whose virulent poison even now corrodes my entrails. But that time I really screwed up. To ask you to marry me was presumptuous and reckless. If you’d always been good to me it was only because you took pity on me. Pity. Compassion. You wanted to help me to be happy. You wanted to help me to get over my woes. My feelings are hot and tense; your feelings are cool and placid. Your life is cool and placid. You like the river, are bound to the river. You said the river is a master teacher. You like pure music, are bound to pure music. You said pure music is a master teacher. You expressed yourself a little like Jang Sae Tang – Jang Sae Tang: he’d talked to me one night at Top Light in Siam Square, had told me to think about the slowness, calm, evenness and naturalness of water. He’s much older than I. He must’ve noticed my hypertension, my absence of serenity. He told me that finally water would triumph over everything. I asked him if right now we were in the middle of the Sahara he would dare speak like this. He got angry. He called me a devil. He called me a Rasputin. On our following encounters, I got the impression he answered my greetings grudgingly. I don’t know. I don’t like the attitude of people who understand life. No need to fucking understand life. Life is made to be used, not to be stored away, not to be understood. I don’t know. It might be that tomorrow I’ll go on a trip, I’ll be a pirate, I’ll be a slave runner, I’ll be a mercenary, I’ll carve out an empire for myself in some barbarous land. I’m not going to waste my time sitting like a fool trying to understand life. The ideal dinner guests for me are Satan, Nietzsche, Beethoven, Rimbaud, Lawrence of Arabia, Ivan the Terrible and the marquis de Sade. The ideal dinner guests for you are the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Marcus Aurelius, Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Mother Teresa in Calcutta. You love pure music and you like to talk of the sublime nature of pure music. You told me that event of the Second World War when the German soldiers were besieged for a long time in Stalingrad, until one day the Russian soldiers broadcast I don’t know which lousy piece from that fellow Bach through loudspeakers pointed at the German lines and there and then the German soldiers surrendered, crying their eyes out. You told me some mad count was cured of his madness by listening to Chopin’s works. You said you wished there’d be a radio station broadcasting pure music round the clock, with ads at times if necessary. You didn’t dare tell me pure music would help pacify me, but then you made me listen to Chopin in large doses, whether I wanted to or not. You said many other things about music therapy. I listened to everything, be it the Raindrop Prelude, the Butterfly Study, the Revolutionary Etude or the Polonaise in A-flat major. Beautiful stuff. Chopin is a sublime melancholic, a great lover of poems and flowers. Except that his music turned me even crazier. I’ve always hurt you, in dreams as well as in reality. Your riverside house, with the orchard next to it, at the outskirts of town, I went there often when we went out together. You were a young country girl. You had a nice, very neat complexion. Your upper front teeth were overlapping a little. I told myself that if you smiled so often, it was simply to display your teeth. Your house and its orchard were quiet and everything was green. Mango trees predominated, but there were also among them betel nut, coconut, rose apple, Marian plum and jackfruit trees. At night only insects, the engines of boats up and down the river, the rustling of foliage, the splashes of fishes in the orchard drainage ditches were audible, but like all the other orchard houses in the neighbourhood, the house faced the road, its back to the river. All the houses had shops upfront which sold the fruit of their orchards. Your house also had its shop upfront, except that it sold sweets. It was a family operation which earned more, it seemed, than did the sale of mangoes, rose apples and jackfruit. It was mainly your mother who served the regular and transit customers of ‘Mother Chin’s Confectionary’. That’s how I knew your mother’s name, even though I had no wish to know it. She had more than ten helpers, young local lasses. In those days when we went out together, I ate sweets to nausea. Your mother’s most famous delicacy was kraya sart63. There was a signboard vaunting the excellence of said delicacy as vouched for by established gourmets. Other sweets were just as popular, foi thong64, balls of sugared shredded coconut, and crystallised Bengal quince, but without a sign to vouch for their excellence. Your mother was an ordinary countrywoman with a clear complexion and a full figure, and she was kind-hearted. She barely knew how to read and write and was years younger than your father. She was allergic to cigarette smoke and seemed a bit too keen on cleanliness, a trait you had inherited. Your father was an old man, robust and methodical, an avid reader, lover of Thai music and poet in his spare time. He was a decent flute player. He had an uncommon past, which had me hold my breath without reason in his presence. You told me your father had many siblings. He wanted to go to school, but his parents didn’t have two pennies to rub together. So he became a novice while still very young until he passed the seventh level of theological studies, while studying to be a country teacher, which he finally became after seven years as a novice and five years as a monk. He then disrobed. As a teacher, he did his utmost to further his knowledge and he retired as district education officer. When you were little, you had to change schools often, in step with your father’s postings. It was only when your father retired that you found a permanent abode in Chachoengsao, the riverside town, on the piece of land your mother had inherited. You were then finishing high school. And that’s where you felt you really were home. Some of your character traits, for instance your thirst for learning, your determination, your rather conservative way of thinking and speaking, your religiosity, you obviously derived from your father. Though you were an only child, your whims weren’t often indulged. Your father and your mother were baffled all the same the first time you brought home the scruffy friend that I was. But it seemed you’d never been up to mischief and you were being trusted in everything. Your parents thus didn’t stand on ceremony with me, so that I didn’t feel ill at ease. Actually, your father and your mother once alone must’ve been very much worried about their daughter’s boyfriend. There were times when your mother gave me a thoroughly piercing look to figure out how serious I was regarding her daughter. But when I was absent for a long time, she was the one to ask about me. She wasn’t happy unless I ate a lot, swallowed sweets as much as I could wish for and showed interest in how she crystallised her delicious Bengal quince. At the end of the meal, I helped you wash the dishes. When I was at your house, I didn’t stay idle. If I could help you I did. I even helped man the sweets shop. I went there so often all your dogs wagged their
tails to greet me. Actually, I should never have touched you, not even with my little finger. The house and the orchard … The nights there were nicely quiet. But there were more than a few mosquitoes and one had to sleep under a net, without fuss and with a pleasant sense of strangeness – mat unrolled, mosquito net in place, mosquito net and pillow clean as can be. I always slept like a log and woke up at dawn. Life adapted itself to its natural rhythm. But, a little past midday, drowsiness overtook me. I discreetly went to lie down under a tree at the end of the orchard or else in the riverside pavilion. On some nights before going to bed, we’d kiss furtively. It was most exciting risk taking, a source of dazzling palpitations. I’d got used to your house and I’d got used to that riverside town. I remember it all – the rows of Indian almond trees and jew-bushes with red flowers in the school where you studied in the last year of secondary, the houseboats, the public parks along the river, the old-town walls, the century-old rain trees of the railway station. But then one day I simply distanced myself from all of those things, and it was only one month and twenty-six, twenty-seven days after Itthee’s death that I went back there once again. At present, it’s past eleven at night. Seventeen, eighteen minutes past eleven. Stone-breaking cold. Heartbreaking solitude. I’m alone here. I feel like an old man. No, not feel: I truly am an old man. But you are there, over there in the city of courtesans, the city of criminals, the city of zombies. Bangkok, a city with aberrant weather, but no-one can do anything about it and even if one could, no-one would. Bangkok, a city with a thousand faces. Bangkok, a city no-one owns. February in Bangkok … It must be the hot season already, damn hot. Bangkok has only two seasons: the hot season and the damn hot season, and only two kinds of residents: bastards and damn bastards, those pathetic sons of bitches who shut themselves up in narrow and stifling shophouses or else in narrow and stifling concrete kennels. Over there, large rooms there are practically none. Open spaces there are practically none. If there are any, they belong to the rich. Those fucking rich, when will they disappear from the face of the earth to be relegated to the museum of the past? It’s only the rich that have a history that’s the pride of their progeny. The poor have no history. Or if they do, it’s only the history of anonymous and faceless men. All the poor of history are anonymous and faceless men. Most people actually don’t know who their ancestors were. Few are those that do. I’m the same. I don’t know who my ancestors were. I don’t know at all. But the rich, they do. No, I’m not going to curse the rich right now. Not that I’m not able to find what to curse them with, but because I haven’t yet thought of curses humiliating enough. But finding them, trust me, won’t take me long. I’m a dictionary of imprecations. Maybe you don’t believe me, because I seldom swore in your presence. I was polite with you because I still wanted to sleep with you. You don’t like vulgar men. With women that don’t like vulgar men, I’m not vulgar. I love women who love men who aren’t vulgar. I’m a vulgar man who loves women who love men who aren’t vulgar. Here I am starting to mock, to be sarcastic. You do see, don’t you, that I don’t care for you all that much. I’m a fascist. ‘All women admire fascists.’ Who wrote that? A woman: Sylvia Plath. I’m a bad man who wants everyone to be good and behave well to one another. I’m a beast who’d like to see everything go smoothly and beautifully. Do you understand me? I love you. Yes, I’ve told you so so often you are fed up to the back teeth, and even if I don’t say so you know it, and knowing that I love you makes you fed up to the back teeth. Kangsadarn. Well yes, I did sleep with Khwan your friend. I can’t do without women and living here one feels so lonely, so abandoned, and the only woman that’s been close to me these past three months is her. So I slept with her, that’s all. It’s my fault. Don’t ask me for details. I’ve had at times the fleeting thought of going back to Bangkok, which means ditching her, which is tantamount to saying one day she and I met and slept together and one day we’ll split, according to the proved and exquisite method of the pathetic sons of bitches we all are. Lately, my mood swings have been scaring her sometimes. We are all completely promiscuous these days. After a few minutes’ talk, we go and sleep together, without knowing each other’s names, or merely knowing each other’s nicknames we go and sleep together. I myself am promiscuous. I myself am not that much better than the people I curse. We are all animals. The only difference is who is more of an animal. I’m fed up. I’m disgusted. I fled from the heartland of dissolution, from the land of broken hearts, but I’ve hardly arrived here when I do something ignoble yet again. I’m not ready and probably never will be ready for life as a couple, yet I keep sleeping with lots of women. Most women who sleep with me aren’t ready and probably never will be ready for life as a couple, yet they keep sleeping with lots of men. At first, I thought I was too old. I’m practically at death’s doorstep. I probably wouldn’t have the strength to get involved with a woman or do something bad. But unfortunately, I was wrong on all counts, which shows that I don’t understand much about that thing I call ‘me’. But now I’m once again left without strength. I’m at death’s doorstep. Lethargic like a dying pupa, like a dying maggot, like a dying cockroach. That’s exactly how I feel. Maybe it’s an illusion. I’d like to have a body and a mind as tough as in the old days. I’d like to do something risky and exciting (Oh, I even dream about it to the point of being delirious.): being a motocross driver or a paratrooper or possibly joining in a marathon or even merely wandering about. I know the method that’s going to pep me up and revitalise me: less coffee, fewer cigarettes, no longer sleeping in the daytime and no longer working at night, exercising and having three meals a day with plenty of vegetables and fruit, drinking several glasses of clear water per day – how many glasses, I forget. And the important is to proclaim one’s independence vis-à-vis all the bitter memories one has, to divorce from sadness, de facto as de jure. I know the foods that slow down ageing. I used to have several books on the topic, actually. Health is important. The body is God’s sanctuary. Don’t ask the doctor how important health is; ask the patient instead. A derelict body isn’t fit to host a beautiful soul. Plato was called Plato because he had the large shoulders of an athlete. I’m crazy to live like a patient. The life of a patient … The imagination of a patient…Adiseased soul that can’t be free. The body must exercise just as much as the mind. A sublime mind and acute intelligence are of equal importance. I’m a romantic. You too are a romantic. We are trees with common roots, with common sap, and it’s because I’m a romantic that you love me, forgetting to tell yourself that thoughts and emotions of a romantic cast are very much akin to stupidity. We should never have met and, even after we did, I should’ve had the presence of mind to run away from you as fast and as far away as I could. I should never have met you, neither you nor anyone else. In fact, I should never have been born. The world would continue to exist and revolve without me. The world would feel nothing if I didn’t exist. There’s a great many people in the world the world would feel nothing if they didn’t exist either. They, they, they. She, she, she. I, I, I. You, you, you. The anonymous masses… The faceless masses… We just come onto this planet one day and one day we leave it, the whole lot of us, faint shadows, billions of shadows. We all know we must die. Deep down inside we want to be immortal, under one form or another, but we don’t do anything worthwhile while we are alive. We all have a spineless character, the character of the slave. We are all people devoid of history or if we have one, it’s the history of the masses, the history of slaves’ revolts, as happens once in a while. Kings are slaves to history, Tolstoy said as if he was trying to understand monarchy. He must’ve thought kings are worthy of understanding and sympathy as, no matter what, they are ordinary men like us all, no more no less. But that isn’t the priority. The individuals worthy of understanding and sympathy are the slaves. We are all slaves, sleeping slaves, what’s more. In the long history of mankind, it sometimes happens that a slave wakes up. We are our own slaves. We are the slaves of the state, of society, of the times. Our exist
ence is superior to that of animals, but our mind has parameters that make it akin to animals, that’s all. In the course of our lives, at times we are happy animals, at times we are unhappy animals, and we switch ceaselessly from one state to the other. The Buddha too was a slave and he finally proclaimed his liberation and fought for that liberation with the sublime character that was his. He’s the most sublime Homo sapiens that ever was and that ever will be. He’s a Homo sapiens superior to the gods. No wonder ancient folks came up with the story of the gods lowering themselves in front of him as a sign of respect. Weak Homo sapiens will never do anything like that. Weak Homo sapiens die one after the other. Man’s only sin is weakness. I’ve said so time and time again. I got it from I can’t remember which book. I’m trying to toughen myself. I’d like to announce to all those who think of committing suicide that suicide is a silly joke. But I hesitate. I’m not sure of myself, as it may well be I’ll take that way out before long. I myself am weak. Seen from that angle, I’m a great sinner. The world will be a little better when I’m no longer around. I have no meaning apart from making the world a little worse, and when I won’t be around, the world will be a little better. That’s the only little bit of good I can do. I disturb the peace of a few people only, a few dozen people or a little bit more. I vie for the living space of other men, I vie for space, I vie for water, I vie for food, I vie for air, I vie for love (I believe I’ve been loved), I vie for attention (I believe some people have been attentive to me). My existence generates resentment. Living space is something very important on an Earth chock-full of human beings in unprecedented growing numbers. I make some people cry, I make some people seethe with resentment, I depress some people, I disappoint some people, I give some people regrets. I’m a non-person. But the existence of a non-person like me generates resentment. My moronic and irresponsible words and acts generate resentment. I’m not sure of being able to kill someone or even of being able to kill myself. Maybe tomorrow I’ll leave from here to go deep into the jungle, trek into the mountain, walk without aim. I’ll have nothing else to do in life except walk without aim or crawl or writhe or romp about through towns and country or in the deserted immensity of the outdoors. Maybe I’ll no longer think of staying here. Maybe I’ll no longer think of dying here, but go and live somewhere else, go and die somewhere else. Maybe I’ll start searching for a secret, quiet spot somewhere in the world where no human being will have ever set foot – secret and terrifying also, full of multiple dangers. That’s the kind of place that’s suitable for dying. I’m a wild beast, a wild beast that knows how to kill itself. You’ll never have the opportunity to see a wild beast die a natural death. Where do tigers go to die? Where do elephants go to die? Where do gaurs and wild buffalo go to die? Where are their ossuary, decayed pelts, piles of bones, skulls, teeth, fangs and tusks and horns? Do they really have places where they go to die? Why are there legendary tales about elephant graveyards? How true are they, how false? Don’t know. I don’t know. There’s only man to die anywhere, anyhow. People die in the street by accident, are gunned down in bars or knifed to death in gambling dens or else die in brothels as they sleep with a girl, die in awful ways, die without the least refinement, die on the battlefield, die because they kill themselves, die in jail, die under the cloth, die in uniform, die as naked as death itself is naked. To die in the battlefield is the honour of the warrior; to die fornicating is the honour of the fornicator. To die in the warm circle of friends and relatives one loves and has been loved by… As soon as we know we are about to die, we send them an invitation card: Please do us the honour to witness the death of – – , dear friend. To die alone in the loneliness of death as for a long journey where no one takes us to the station and from which we’ll never come back. To die eyes closed, to die wide-eyed, to die in the high C of orgasm, to die at the height of asceticism. To die, to die, to die. I’d like to die like a wild animal. When a wild animal knows its life is about to end, it turns away from the pride, hides from the eyes of the other wild animals, friends and foes alike. It is ashamed of being unable to maintain the dignity of being alive. The inability to maintain its dignity is the inability to hunt. I’m unable to hunt. I must borrow money from you and from friends. When I’m unable to hunt like the wild animal is unable to hunt, I do what the wild animal does: use what remains of life to seek a place where to die, a place where I won’t be found out. The wild animal knows weakness is shameful and it doesn’t want to be looked at with pity. I’m about to die and I’m weak. Don’t tell anyone: weakness is difficult to avoid when one is about to die. There’s no strength left anymore in what is me, body and soul. To be seen at such a juncture would ruin the dignity of death. I insist that death be something dignified, even if I often deride it. Are you angry at me for sleeping with your friend? I should have behaved properly. I know, it wasn’t proper. I behaved like a lady-killer. No, no, I know: morality has gone to pieces.
The White Shadow Page 20